A Date With a Woman That Changed History?

Did Love Change History?

On This Date In History: Napoleon was exiled to Elba on this date in 1814 but you can look that up for yourself, it’s boring compared to what happened 103 years later on April 11, 1917. Allen Dulles is known throughout history as head of the CIA and confidant of several US Presidents. At the age of 24, Dulles was working at the American legation in Switzerland as World War I raged on. He had been smitten with Helene Herzog since he was 15 years old and he finally got a date with her. On that day at noon, Dulles received a phone call from a Russian revolutionary who said he had important information to deliver that night. No one else was in the office so the chore would be left to young Allen Dulles, who had a date that night. What to do? Receive an important message or go on the date. Dulles did what any 24-year-old man would do….he chose the date and told the caller he’d meet with him in the morning. The man said the next day was too late but the love smitten young man paid him no mind.

Lenin Arrives In Russia April 16 1917

While Dulles was on his date, Vladimir Lenin boarded a train in Switzerland bound for Sweden where he would then begin a journey that would take him to Russia. The Russian Revolution had begun. Russia pulled out the war, abandoning the Allies’ cause. As it turns out, the important message that Dulles blew off for his date was a secret message for President Woodrow Wilson from Lenin. Seems Vladimir wanted to give Wilson advanced notice of what he was up to. We don’t know how the date went, but we do know that President Woodrow Wilson had to find out about the Russian Revolution after the fact with the rest of the world….maybe he read it in the New York Times….but he didn’t hear it from Dulles, who had a date. It’s hard to say how it would have made a difference but, who knows how things may have been different?

Dulles In Presidential Limo Between JFK and John McCone in 1962 Just After Being Fired

Thirty Six Years later when Dulles took over as CIA Director, he told that story as a lesson for young agents. But I wonder about the lesson he told. What? That you can be negligent in providing important information for the President of the United States and still be trusted to be the CIA Director? I mean, not getting information to the president that one of your allies in a world war is in revolution and is pulling out of the war is pretty big stuff…especially when the reason was a love sick intelligence officer. But, this may have ended up as a “what goes around comes around” scenario. See, he served as CIA chief from 1953 to 1961. He was ousted by the Kennedy Administration who used him as the scapegoat for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Now, Dulles was probably the sacrificial lamb as he wasn’t the ultimate decision maker, JFK was but someone needed to be blamed and Dulles was the one chosen to be thrown under the bus. So maybe he shouldn’t have been canned in 1961 but that may make up for his not being canned in 1917, when a President was blinded by a young man’s love.

Weather Bottom Line: We had some storms and couple of warnings and numerous hail reports on Good Friday but, as I had suspected, the roughest stuff was to our South and Southeast. I was driving to Knoxville and back and got to Knoxville about 3:30 pm just after a tornado had wasted part of Murfeesboro. As I headed back up I-75, Tornado warnings were issued for two counties just northwest of Knoxville with the storms moving northeast at 45 mph…in other words right across my path on I-75. On the local radio, the announcer was saying how terrible storms were going across I-75 but another woman comes on and says the storms are falling apart. I progressed on pondering as I did not want to get on that plateau between Knoxville and the Kentucky border with big ass storms all over the place since there isn’t much of a place to hide up there. But, as I moved on, the way the rain was falling I could tell that the storms had indeed fallen apart and I was just dealing with rain. Still was a pain in the neck.

Saturday around here will be partly cloudy with highs in the upper 50’s to near 60. Probably mid 60’s on Easter Sunday and plenty of sunshine. As I mentioned previously, the indecies went and flopped back to the point that they support my original outlook from a few days ago regarding the main short coming out and around here on Monday. So, the SPC went and broadened the area of concern. Now, we have the same issue as in previous systems. There is a split decision. It appears there is consensus that moisture does indeed return early Monday morning so we do have a period of reloading to some degree. The problem is that the NAM does get more robust in its calculations but just on the verge of thunderstorms with marginal indications of severe potential. Whereas the GFS once again is going bonkers and advertising a pretty decent event. Guess here is that we get something similar to what we’ve had lately and that is something in between. Some severe storms but not a full blown death and destruction event. However, its late Friday night and we still have several days to go so we’ll see how it shakes out. However, I do think that we’ll have some noteworthy activity late Monday…the only difference is that now I have some data to support my hypothesis…that last part is your reply, Cruxshadows.